yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Re: [APP][2.2+] The Lightning Browser v2.2.0: Open-Source Browser

Since chrome has been updated recently, It now benchmarks HIGHER than lightning browser, however, in practical use, Lightning is way way smoother. I like using the peacekeeper benchmark, which chrome scores 20 points higher on (620 to 600) but while watching all the animations, the refresh rate in chrome is about 30 fps whereas Lightning is rendering at 60 fps... Idk why chrome is benchmarking better, if I was Google I'd use their Android WebKit engine for chrome, it's really awesome.

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Bug fix is out. Apologies to anyone that experienced problems.

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] JokerAce:
Can anyone confirm this?

When I open more than one tab (my tabs are opened in background btw), when I go to the desired tab and try to zoom, the page freezes. But I am still able to scroll through the tab.

So I select any other tabs. Then when I go back to the previous tab which I try to zoom, it is zoomed. I am able to zoom thereafter. But it is kinda annoying if I have to go to tab B, freeze while zom, go to tab A and back to B to see a zoomed one, before I can zoom. Like a switch huh? :eek:
[Android Apps and Games] palbadi:
not working in galaxy y.
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
I thought I fixed this in the latest version, but maybe not. You're definitely not the only one that's seen this. I've seen it before for sure.

That's real descriptive there...

or are you confirming the tab switching problem?

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
So I just went and tested it, and I see what you mean.

The way tabs work is when you click new tab, it either creates a whole new view, or else it recycles an old view if a tab had been recently opened. If you open a new tab, close it and then select open in new tab, it will recycle the old tab by clearing it and then open the URL. If the tab hadn't been open before, opening the link in a new tab freezes it...

So... For those technically inclined, here's what I think is happening

When you open something in a new tab, first I call a new tab function, passing in the tab ID and the URL to load. Then I perform a click on the old tab so that it will stay in view.

Somehow, it's like there's not enough time for the new tab to build itself before the switch, but if was already built, then there's enough time between the new tab function and the old tab click function. I guess I need to rebuild the new tab function to have a new parameter whether it should be shown or loaded in background.

Hope that madre sense.
[Android Apps and Games] Sally600:
Gave it a try and it does seem to load very fast on based my first impressions. Will have to test it out a bit more but this looks like it has potential.
[Android Apps and Games] JokerAce:
Have you tried looking at stock aosp browser and see how they handle such stuff?
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Yeah I look at AOSP code all the time, but my browser works a lot different than AOSP. It really shouldn't be hard hard to fix.

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] JokerAce:
:good::good:

---------- Post added at 12:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:26 AM ----------
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
I don't know what the heck your talking about. Facebook opens fine in Lightning browser. It doesn't open in desktop mode because mobile browsers cant open Facebook in desktop mode... I literally just tried chrome, naked, and lightning on Facebook and they all loaded the mobile view. Switch to desktop and chrome and naked don't do anything while Lightning at least tries to load it but gets a mostly blank page.

I sure hope you didn't go rate it one star because it can't open Facebook in desktop mode...

And like JokerAce said, overly critical.
[Android Apps and Games] petrea_86:
What a decent browser does not open facebook page? At least badly. I also tried other pages, for many times, so they were cached, but I'm not impressed. For me, it doesn't matter how "light" is the apk, it just has to open fast and properly any web page.
[Android Apps and Games] martinusbe:
Puffin browser does open facebook.

even the games...
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
It DOES open Facebook unless in desktop mode (which is the same for other browsers).

I don't know what device your using, but I would bet it has problems, because this browser opens pages fine on my low-end, 2 year old, LG Optimus V, running android 2.2 with only a 600 MHz processor...
[Android Apps and Games] petrea_86:
Sorry, but have you tried facebook's desktop page with naked browser? I use it for few months and it' ok. I thought that lightning is faster and I tried it, but you know how disappointed I was. It's wrong to force all sites to display only mobile pages. Better is to let the user to choose what and how he wants to see. A mobile browser could have less options than a desktop one, but it has to open normally any web page. Note that facebook has almost a billion users, and android users are even more.

---------- Post added at 08:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:29 PM ----------

I use a huawei sonic with the same performance. Naked, opera, dolphin, boat, all of them display facebook's desktop page. And yes, I'm talking about desktop mode.

---------- Post added at 08:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:34 PM ----------

Both destop and custom ua options are useless, because it uses phone's ua anyway.

---------- Post added at 08:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:41 PM ----------

But I'm not talking about redirecting. It's stuck on sign in page. By pressing log in button, it shows that it loads something, but no change.
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Ok, youre right, make valid points you win.

If I change the user agent to something else, Facebook works fine... I guess I had the wrong desktop user agent somehow (I was trying to spoof chrome on windows). I'll be changing that today and updating the browser with a fix for it (along with other changes explained below).

I guess the moral of the story is don't spoof a windows desktop because it's not gonna work...

I apologize for acting a little hostile toward you @petrea_86:) thanks for pointing out the error

--------

@JokerAce, I figured out how to get the tabs to behave correctly, so the weird problem when switching occurs won't happen.

--------

So... The menu for today's update (coming later) to be is

- fixed open in background bug

- fixed buggy desktop user agent

- some other probably unnoticeable code optimizations
[Android Apps and Games] petrea_86:
The biggest problem is that it hates multitasking. If i press phone's home button, the browser dies. When I come back, it loads the start page, instead last page I used.
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
This actually is a problem with your phone's memory limitation I believe, there was a problem like that on old versions of the app but I fixed it a while ago I thought. When I hit home and then open it, it opens the last instance of the browser.

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] Szczepanik:
petrea_86

As a matter of courtesy you should edit your earlier posts to add a correction: both versions open Facebook pages in desktop and mobile according to user agent selected. See screen shot.

Your inaccurate post above will be found by search engines. Please correct it.

Cheers

Tom

My Note II to you
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
I believe it's only partly inaccurate. On some devices, the user-agent I chose hasn't been working for Facebook... I'm not sure why but it doesn't. For instance on my Nexus 7, the desktop user agent displays a blank page for Facebook desktop site, however, by slightly tweaking the UA string and it works... Stupid, but it works.

Idk, all I know is that UA's are stupid. They really should consist of one thing IMO, a single string showing whether the browser wants desktop or mobile, and what browser it is, nothing more.

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] yobebo2x:
Is this browser fast ?
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Nahhh, I built it to be really slow.

Jkk, it's really fast.
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Update will be out in a couple hours, I just published it.

Changelog

- fixed desktop UA

- fixed Facebook for some devices (I don't know how many had problems, it's fixed on my devices is what that means)

- attempted to fix downloading for some (works on both my devices)

- code optimization

- fixed a touch problem with android 2.2

- fixed weird problem with opening in a new tab
[Android Apps and Games] petrea_86:
Other browsers at least reload the last page. Yes, I use a low-end device. I understand that it's not possible to make a browser that will consume less resources than opera mini, but I think there has to be multiple ways to reduce memory consumption to decent values. I tried to open the same page with uc browser and with naked. There's a huge difference between them. So IMHO, it's very important how much memory a browser eats.
[Android Apps and Games] JokerAce:
Well.. I have to use stock browser to reply this. I will explain why.

Firstly, thanks, I can zoom with ease now.

Secondly, desktop mode is fine, never had problems.

Now, I have to concur that the lightning browser can't handle multitasking. When I reply to this thread with it, I realize I have to edit the attached image for privacy reason. So I edited. Came back to lightning and all 4 tabs including the tab I am using to respond to this thread were closed. It opens Google page instead.

Next, I can't do attachment using lightning. Using stock browser, if I click on management attachments to attached a file, it opens a new tab for that purpose. After attaching, I can close that tab, and the attachments will be updated on the previous tab. With lightning, it doesn't open a new tab. It use the current tab, and after attaching, going back to previous page results in no attachment. In fact, whatever I typed were removed :mad:

Thanks for constantly improving tho. Keep it up
[Android Apps and Games] inferno17x:
Yes, I do face the same issue as well.

Another thing is that can you also make an option like when I long press a link it would actually allows me to press an enter key (since there is no option to bring up a keyboard) so that I can access to the link.

Because some links that I encountered requires to press the enter key from the keyboard in order to access the link.

At the moment only puffin browser which I have known of can bring up an optional keyboard for me to press enter in order to access the link.

If you can provide something like that will be very great.

Thank you!
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Very true, and I understand that completely about memory being important. I've tried as much as possible to make the app consume little memory in order to leave as much memory as possible for the webview. On my device naked browser uses slightly more memory than lightning, I would assume because of the optimizations I did. I have very little control over how much memory the webview uses since that is controlled by the system itself. What I'm planning on doing is recording the last opened URLs so that when the browser gets killed from low memory, it will reopen the tabs.

I honestly don't understand why its behaving like this, like I've said, I have a low low end phone and multitasking works fine. It must have something to do with certain devices. What I'm gonna have to do is as stated above, keep a database of open URLs so that when the browser is killed it reopens them.

For the second thing, I do need to support multiple windows (the technical term for what you're referring to)... I started doing it a while ago, but couldn't figure out where the method was to retrieve the URL for the new tab. I looked a little yesterday, but since I was busy I quit on that and just fixed the other stuff. I'll definitely put that in my priority list though, it should fix that problem.

I have never seen a link like this ever...... Which is how most bugs with this browser happen lol. Since I'm a one-person team, my usage doesn't cover everyone and it's hard for me to find bugs.

Can't you just select the open normally option when long pressing one of these links? I would think that would open it...

Maybe I can emulate a key-press code wise.
[Android Apps and Games] inferno17x:
This website is meant for my company use for service ticket and fault reporting.

So when I access this website with my username and password I can see various tickets.

In order for me to read the contents in the tickets I have to open the link.

When I long press the link it either select the words or it does nothing.

When I use puffin browser I select the ticket and bring up the optional keyboard and press enter to access the ticket.

So far I have tried various browser only puffin browser allows me to do that.
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
So what I'm thinking is I could bring the keyboard up by long-pressing the menu button in the top right corner of the URL bar.

I don't know too much about this sort of link, but based on your description, I searched and found out a bunch of questions on stack overflow that were asking how to detect an enter-key press from the keyboard using jQuery...... So I guess as long as you can bring the keyboard up and can press the enter key, it will work.

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] inferno17x:
Yes it should be able to work as long as I'm able to bring up the keyboard and press the enter key.
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Ok, so I figured out a way to save the tabs when the browser is killed... It doesn't slow down the browser when starting up either (except for the fact that it has to load the tabs), which is a good thing.
[Android Apps and Games] celltestr:
First, I really like this lightweight browser. I've been using it as my default browser for a few days now and I really like it. Thank you!

Can you implement something similar to the desktop Firefox browser that allows you to select if you want to reload all the tabs on startup or not.. If you choose not to reload the tabs automatically it will reload the tab only when you actually selecting it. This makes the startup time much faster since it doesn't need to reload all the tabs..

And like someone else mentioned in this thread an incognito mode support will be very appreciated.
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Oh yes, I forgot to mention that it will be an option in settings (although enabled by default for the masses) because I personally don't want my tabs reloading.

Also, incognito is on my list of todos, but I don't understand the whole realm of cookies and tracking enough yet to feel confident building a reliable incognito mode without any holes. I want to do some research so I can do it right because I know privacy is important.
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
An update will be rolling out on the play store in about an hour, adding a restore tabs option in settings, fixing some issues with froyo (if anyone is still on it), fixed German translation, changed up settings a little to be a little more Holo-ish.

I have a question about the incognito mode:

Would it be better to have an option in the drop down menu to create a single incognito tab, OR would it be better to have an option in settings that turns the browser into a complete private browser (every tab is an incognito tab and no history cookies etc recorded)?
[Android Apps and Games] jkgao:
I think you should use the one where it just opens in a separate window.. I think that is preferred by most people, but I guess the other way would also work. I don't know if it has been mentioned, but you should include a "Request Desktop Site" toggle in the drop-down menu.
[Android Apps and Games] celltestr:
Single tab. And if new tabs are being open from that tab they will be incognito tabs as well.

---------- Post added at 09:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:55 PM ----------

You already have the option to see the desktop site in settings.
[Android Apps and Games] inferno17x:
If possible please also include in your next version update for bringing up the keyboard by long-pressing the menu button in the top right corner of the URL bar.

Thank you!
[Android Apps and Games] celltestr:
I think you miss understood me.. The session restore option is great. It will be even greater if you will can load all the tabs from the previous session but without actually reloading the pages in the tabs (no data usage) so when it comes up it will be even faster. (similar to Firefox)

Thanks for the update!
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Yep, I'll try to add request desktop site. And I guess I'll use the standard incognito tab.

Yeah, but some people just want to view the single site in desktop without having to open a new tab. Still, I won't ever have site specific user agent loading like because that slows stuff down.

I'm really sorry I forgot to add that in the last version, I can get forgetful sometimes. I'll write a note to myself right now.

I didn't misunderstand you, I just did it a slightly different way. Yeah that'd be nice to have, but that would use a considerable amount of space on the device. I don't want to get into saving HTML files to the phone, but I'll try to see if I can load them from cache....... Ideally, that should work... In theory... But you never know...

Actually (sorry for kinda changing my mind here), there's an option to load from the cache and if there's something missing, to load from the network. Let me try that and see if it will increase startup time!!!!!!!

Also, sorry to anyone that has the + version, I was tired and made some mistakes that disabled infinite tabs, an update will be rolling out soon.
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Ok so... Quick line of code and voila! It loads only from the cache, using no data. Thanks for the suggestion celltestr

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] ethicalsatan:
Wow,it is really pretty fast...a very simple and elegant design..Overall a really good Browser app :):good:
[Android Apps and Games] daniel_m:
Wow, the text re-flow works nicely! Thanks for adding this great feature! :victory:

Great to see more open source software coming to Android, and your browser is a good adition.

But here is another request: Could you slim down the UI a little? The tab bar and the address bar take away quite some screen space on small devices (320x480px). ;)
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Have you tried full screen mode? ;) I have a device the same exact resolution (Optimus V) and I get by with the full screen mode. I can do a little brainstorming about it, but I don't know if I can come up with anything better without making it take a while to get to things like tabs.
[Android Apps and Games] m4rk4:
Crashes on Kindle Fire

I wanted try this on my rooted Kindle Fire HD 7", but it crashes after briefly showing the main window. Here's part of the logcat.

Maybe you have a dependency on the stock Android browser that is not present on the Kindle Fire (it comes with Amazon's Silk browser). I do use Naked Browser, so I know Webkit based browsers will work. Hope you can fix it. Let me know if you need more info or testing. Thanks.

Edit:

BTW the mediafire link doesn't work in the OP, so I'm using Lightning 2.0.12.1 from your other forum.
[Android Apps and Games] coklatuchiha:
Woa. Faster than uc web.

I guess ill use this for my main browser :)
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Let me post the updated version, I kinda forgot. Yes there is a dependency on the stock browser, but it first tests to find the stock browser, so there shouldn't be crashing, but 2.0.12.1 was many updates ago so there could be a problem on that build. I'll post the updates in a sec

Edit: actually, let me send you an apk... Reason for that is I'm in the middle of adding some stuff/improving something and I'm not sure how reliable its working (loading pages from cache on start up) so I don't want to release it yet to everyone.

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Link in OP fixed. If that one doesn't work for you, reply here and I'll send you a version Thats sure to be fixed.

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] m4rk4:
Same crash with the new version in the OP.

It seems to detect the stock browser (I missed that in the last post), but then crashes in doUpdateVisitedHistory() when accessing the stock browser history (if I'm reading the code right). I guess the check for noStockBrowser needs to be more stringent is some way.
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Yeah, this is strange. Let me send you a file

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] Moon83:
I can't get flash videos to work in full screen. Anybody else have this problem?

Sent from my HTC_Amaze_4G...Go Canes []_[]
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Yeah there's been other reports I've seen. I'm not exactly sure how to fix it to be quite honest. I would think if normal HTML 5 videos work in full screen then flash videos would too... But they don't.

If anyone wants to look at the source code and make a suggestion on how to fix flash videos, that'd be awesome lol...

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] celltestr:
Some minor bugs/feature request:

1. When clicking on a link that can be opened with a dedicated app (like link to xda forum) the browser doesn't give the option to select the app to complete the task.

2. When clicking on a link inside an app that opens the browser (like link inside an email in the gmail app) and then clicking on the back action button (not in the browser, in the navbar/softkey) the browser doesn't close/minimize and return to the original app. It stays up and just loading the homepage.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus
[Android Apps and Games] LucknowBoy:
awesome browser and it works great
[Android Apps and Games] rockvoid:
I would prefer a full incognito mode in settings - there is no android browser with this feature - your would be the first!

Is it possible to add both modes?

PS: contact me if i can help you translating new settings to german
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
I could try both, I guess.

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] panchuckles:
Amazing browser, but in the new update i found some UI glitch

Device: xperia s (lt26i)
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Yepppp, I'll hopefully be able to publish an update today fixing that issue :p

Sent from my Nexus 7
[Android Apps and Games] sandulea:
Hi, I really like your browser, even if I miss the ability to choose a download location, but there is only one thing that really affects the usability, in my opinion.

When in fullscreen mode, the tab and address bars appear when you're at the top of the page and you either swipe down or do a single press somewhere in the topmost part of the page (they also appear sometimes when slowly swiping up, but not always). The problem is that some pages like the mobile versions of google and wiki have a search box at the top of the page, and whenever you press on it to invoke the keyboard, the address and tab bars show up and cover the search box, so you can't see what you're typing unless you click elsewhere on the page, but that means that you cannot select any text in the search box. It would be ideal if you could bring down the tab and address bars only by swiping down when you're at the top of the page.

I would also have a less important suggestion. I fell in love with the "save as PDF" option in firefox, and it would be nice to be able to save a page for offline reading, regardless of the format.

If it's of any use, I am running the free version on a Note 2, 4.1.2 mostly stock rom, 240 dpi.
[Android Apps and Games] anthonycr:
Hey sanulea,

I attempted to fix that problem a while ago, and in my experience it works pretty well. I thought I had fixed it but, it looks like it is having some trouble working. I'll try to fix it again

As for save as pdf, good idea for a future version, I'll add that to my huge list of stuff I'm considering... Speaking of which, I'll post that list.

Sent from my Nexus 7